The bad feeling hit him first.

Even deep inside his bones he felt the distress of losing and wanted to block it away and drown again.

He’d thought of himself as more important than defeat or death, that he’s had some great destiny that would lead beyond feeling this ashamed.

Then the bad feeling washed backwards like a tides across his body and left a broad emptiness.

Then the throbbing all over his body, the bruised knuckles, the swelling on his insides, the crackling when he moved, the wounds not quite fatal.

Who was this person, ashamed and hurt and feeling like shit?

Ah. Himself? Well, hello, familiar old friend.

His name came to his mind – and then the smell.

The air reeked of decay – spoiled meat, coppery blood, wet garbage from a broken can nearby, and that weird cloying sweetness that made his stomach churn and his throat tighten.

Lochlan’s fingers clawed at the pavement, scraping through a brittle carpet of dead leaves that cracked like old parchment under his fingertips. They stuck to his skin, damp with autumn rain and something darker, their veins soaked black with rot.

You would think the cold would have drowned something like that out, but instead it seemed to sharpen every sensation, making the rot more vivid, the blood more metallic.

*Where was he?*

Even as his stomach lurched, he felt a weird sense of relief. The cold even felt invigorating in its brutality.

At least he was still alive.

His wound groaned like a hot, elaborate sucking.

He pushed his weight down on his right palm, the concrete biting into his flesh, and pulled himself up with a grunt that tore from his throat.

He looked like certified dogshit, like he’s been hit by a truck with teeth. And this was in public.

Lochlan stood in the dark corridor of a public park in the Alcove City (which was not even a city) Memorial (also not a memorial) Park.

The sky was a bruised orange above the tree line, and he knew where he was by some kind of instinct deeper than memory – Midtown Ravenna.

Then his head started to split again.

Things were coming back, with a queer alinearity to them.

And the last few hours were a distant haze – he’d remembered getting dressed this morning, sitting on the insides of a hot van, his past as a wanderer for… long enough to dim his own memory. A heated confrontation, and then running for his life, and then a sharp sudden pain that had split his memory clean.

He was yes, a wanderer, but this, even distant and weird in his own mind, was still a familiar city.

Not quite home, but not far away either.

Lochlan ran his hands along his body, patting his old cotton jacket, fingers brushing the sticky patch visible in the distance of the streetlights. It looked like mud, but the texture was wrong, thin and syrupy, clinging to the fabric like the park itself had bled on him.

Then the gurgling started, wet and rasping, growing closer until a voice slithered over the concrete: “It’s a shame. He heard us.”

A figure emerged from behind a dumpster near the park’s maintenance shed, its movements jerky like a marionette with cut strings. The churning in Lochlan’s gut deepened, and suddenly the undershirt he had on beneath his jacket – and no wonder he was fucking cold—felt frail and useless more than ever.

Once this thing had been human; now the skin was a surreal sort of waxy gray, the clothes ripped and stained even worse than his own. The mouth gaped open, revealing teeth too long, sharp as if they’d been filed to a point. And the chest.

Oh, there was the source of the smell – a gaping, jagged hole with edges raw and glistening in the sickly park lighting. Blackened veins spidered out from the wound as if the flesh was rotting from the inside. Lochlan looked down, and where the creature’s heart should have been, there was only a hollow cavity.

His breath came in short, sharp bursts. The creature was between him and the street – the only way out was through the park’s winding paths.

He raised his hand not in surrender but in a futile attempt to shield himself. The thing tilted its head, vertebrae cracking loudly like stepping on dry branches, and laughed – a wet, rattling sound that smelled of grave soil and something older, something fundamentally wrong.

“What was wrong with me? What was wrong with me? Why did he turn me away?” the creature hissed.

“What the fuck?” Lochlan’s pulse bumped in his ears once, then twice.

He decided to get the hell out of there.

He stepped backward, tripping over his own heel, then the heel catching on a loose brick from the park’s decorative border.

The creature lunged, its movement somewhere between a plea and a threat – clumsy but terrifying in its desperation.

Lochlan fell hard on his ass, the impact jarring up his spine, then stumbled back onto his hand, palm scraping against rough pavement.

“What the fuck?” He groaned, a low sound of pain and frustration, shaking off the cold that seemed to want to keep him down, and pushed upward with all the strength he could muster back onto his feet.

He lowered his chin, closed his eyes for one terrifying second, and ambled forward with all the determination he could scrape together, closing his eyes as if the desiccated, shambling corpse now behind him, was a nightmare or a delusion he could shake off as he ran.

Lochlan pushed one foot after another, no more tripping, no more hesitation – this time, it would cost him time he couldn’t afford. Down toward the streetlight at the park’s edge, past winding cobblestone paths that led upward toward the street, he probably looked just as insane, just as horrific as the corpse – the moving corpse that he just shuffled past on his way to salvation.

He looked both ways as he staggered up the hill, his leather shoes – brown leather, he noted distantly – clicking sharply on the pavement. The heels hadn’t worn down yet, making sharp, precise sounds in the relative quiet of the city night.

Yeah. This definitely WAS Alcove City Memorial, and the city continued apathetic without him as he tried to gain his bearings.

There, idling at the curb as if waiting specifically for him, sat a Rolls-Royce or something like it – sleek, black, impossibly expensive looking. He’d expected a night on the run. In fact, maybe he’d expected to keep running until his memory returned. Maybe he expected to keep running and never stop.

Either way, the passenger window slid down with the warm whisper of hydraulics.

“Now what,” the woman drawled, “the fuck is that thing?”

Despite the surreality of his situation, he patted the sides of his chest twice, flattened his palms down against his thighs as if taking an inventory of himself for the first time.

He looked backward and tried to give the creature a dismissive glance.

“I feel like I’m in a science fiction movie.”

Lochlan strode toward the car, as fast as he could without breaking into a silly looking run, his shoes making sharp, confident sounds on the pavement.

It wasn’t following him anymore – it had fallen with a heavy thud, its mouth still open, and now the only sound from it was a raspy creak in the distance, like an old door swinging on rusted hinges.

The creature gave one final guttural noise that carried the weight of time, anger, frustration; then it stopped completely.

All right.

The interior smelled of old leather, expensive perfume, and something colder beneath it all – like the air after a lightning strike.

The woman behind the wheel had lidded eyes and a suntan, her features plump and charming, her lips a slash of dark teal.

Her eyes kept that hooded, easy expression she studied him, her gaze lingering on the sticky stain on his jacket.

“I’m Tiffany Valois.” Her voice was a southern contralto. Maybe Louisiana at first glance, but distinctively American. “Can I tell you about myself? I see a normal looking man and whatever fucking abomination that was and I jump in on the normal looking man’s side.”

“I think Desmond Tutu said something about that principle, so we’re well met.”

“You must want a ride.”

Lochlan’s fingers found the door handle.

As he opened it, a memory surfaced that clawed at his stomach. Steel clashing. The weight of a sword in his hand. The shame of yielding. The taste of blood. It vanished as quickly as it came, leaving only an omnipresent feeling of humiliation in its wake.

He slid into the car, the leather seats sighing under his weight.

The engine hummed to life beneath him, the tires swishing over asphalt as the city blurred outside the window – courtly looking retail complexes flickering, and bright shadows pooling in the rain-washed streets.

The woman didn’t wait any longer for him to speak.

“A wise decision,” she said, her eyes on the road. “Trust me, leave that sort of thing to the authorities.” She glanced at him, her dark eyes narrowing. “Did somebody try to kill you?”

“Yeah, I think so?”

Lochlan flexed his right hand, feeling the bruised knuckles.

The knowledge was there, buried beneath the amnesia – he knew what a sword was, what a wound felt like, the particular shame of losing a duel. The creature in the park had suffered some worse defeat, he suspected. Some ultimate rejection that left it – well, hollowed out.

“And that is a very interesting way for a man to dress.”

“All right. Thank you.”

Valois took his retort neutrally. “Do you remember you challenging your local librarian to a duel?”

Lochlan started to laugh lightly, and she did too. His hand hurt. His clothes were expensive but had clearly seen the road.

“Well, I remember not liking the police.” Lochlan said, his voice steadier than he felt.

She pulled to a stop before a heavy oak door, unmarked, set into a high stone wall. No number, no name. Just an alleyway, cleaner and quieter than the park, lying to one side.

“Well,” she drawled, her tone a mix of amusement and warning. “I did say we’d leave it to the authorities.”

Lochlan gave a skeptical look, but stepped out right away, the cool air biting his skin where the car’s warmth had begun to seep in.

A stable looking place that didn’t feel as final as a hospital or a police station. Maybe this was the mob? The woman’s voice had already faded, her car vanishing around the corner.

He stood alone before the door, its surface smooth and unyielding. At its center, a black iron ring shaped like a serpent devouring its own tail. As he approached, the door clicked, groaning as it swung inward.

Darkness yawned beyond it, absolute. The air smelled of dust, old books, and ozone. A voice rasped from the void, dry as old parchment: “Valois, what is this shitshow you’re letting in?”

The woman’s voice came from the darkness behind him, though he hadn’t heard her approach. “At least it’s a show.”

Lochlan whirled. “Oh, I thought you had -”

“What, just dropped you off in the middle of nowhere? Without at least collecting a fare for escorting you from Ground Zero?” She gestured to the door. “You gotta be shittin me.”

A pause, then the rasping voice sighed. “Close the door behind you, please. The night does have ears.”

Lochlan hesitated. He thought of the shambling corpse he’d left in the park, and the sucking shame they both felt – the awful tug in his gut.

He didn’t need to get clean to get away from that.